CHAPTER l l

Before Theory: Romantic Roamings

When Harold Bloom entered the arena of l i terary

cri t icism in the late 1950's, readers immediately

recognized that they were confronting "one of the most

challenging and audacious theoretical voices of the past

several decades" (Fite, Preface xi). The term "theoretical"

here is to be understood in the sense of "cri t ical" because

at a t ime when the profession of l i terary cri t icism was

recording tremendous progress by featuring cri t icism

writ ten about cri t icism, Bloom had the intel lectual

audacity to make a strong plea to return to the poem

itself , to the world of l i terature. And for Bloom, the world

of l i terature is the world of romantic poetry. He opened

his account in l i terary crit icism with his book-length study

of Shelley's poetry anc ever afterwards, he has faithful ly

held on to the one subiect of interest to him - the inf inite

possibi l i t ies of the romantic imagination.

The f i rst book to be published by Bloom was

Shelley's Mythmaking in 1959. Along with an introductory

chapter on the mythopoeic mode based on Mart in Buber's

dist inct ion between 'I-'Thou' and ' I - I t ' words, i t contains

detai led analysis of Shelley's mythmaking in his important

poems l ike "1816 Hymns," Prometheus Unbound, "Ode to

the West Wind," "The Sensitive Plant," "The Witch of

Atlas," "Epipsychidion" and "The Triumph of Life."

I t i s said that forthcoming events cast their shadows

beforehand. This is true of Shelley's Mythmaking,

because i t is an indication of what is to be expected from

Bloom. The book undertakes a very minute and detailed

interpretation of Shelley's poems in the New Crit ical

mode. At the same time the dif ference in approach - at

least the desire to be different - is quite evident from the

very f irst l ine of the introduction. Instead of introducing

the subject o f study in the conventional mode Bloom goes

on elaborating Buber's dist inct ion between the two

primary words, / -Thou and /-It. Later in the book, he

states beyond doubt that the purpose of the book is to

demonstrate that Shelley is a passionately rel igious poet,

"who formulates his religion by the actual writ ing of his

poems, the making of his myths, and further to

demonstrate the nature of those myths, by a close

reading of the actual f ~gu res in which they are embodied

in the poems" (67).

In the introductory chapter, Bloom explains three

kinds of mythopoeic poetry, based on Buber's dist inct ion

between ' I-Thou' and ' I - I t . ' In the f irst, the poet uses a

given mythology, but extends i ts range of signif icance

without violat ing i t in spirit. Shelley's "Hymn of Apollo"

and "Hymn of Pan" are good examples. The second kind

of myth poetry i s rather primit ive because i t embodies the

direct perception of a "Thou" in natural objects or

phenomena. The poet enters into a relat ionship with a

natural "Thou" and the relationship i tsel f consti tutes the

myth. In the third kind, which is more complex, the poet

creates his own myth instead of adhering to tradit ional ly

formulated myths. Shelley's major poems, according to

Bloom, manifest this third kind of mythopoeia.

Before beginning the analysis of Shelley's "1816

Hymns," Bloom closely analyses Coleridge's "Hymn

Before Sunrise" and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey Lines."

This is to indicate how Shelley's poems show a clear

aff inity to these poems "Mont Blanc," "Hymn to

Intel lectual Beauty" ancl "Zucca" are analyzed in detail.

Bloom i l lustrates how Shelley's poems are related to one

another and also to the poems of other romantic poets

l ike Coleridge and Wordsworth.

In the introductiol i to the study of Prometheus

Unbound, Bloom begins with an analysis of the epigraph

to give i t a meaning which no other editor or scholar

seems to have noticed. The inf luence of Blake and Milton

in Prometheus Unbound is carefully traced and

establ ished. Bloom also refers to the other

representations of Prometheus in world l i terature.

A pretty long study of the "Ode to the West Wind"

fol lows. Bloom points out that the subject o f the poem is

the nature and function of the prophet. Blake and Shelley

are poets of the class of Ezekiel. According to Bloom, an

earl ier poem which most resembles the Ode is "The Song

of Deborah" that celebrates courage and fai th as prime

virtues of a people. He calls to his help Buber's

interpretation of the earl ier poem to show that Shelley's

Ode is a myth-making poem. Poets before Shelley l ike

Lucretius, Virgi l , Horace and Milton have addressed their

praises to the wind, which is favourable to l i fe. But no

one has invoked, l ike Shelley, the West Wind, which is a

destroyer and not a creator. While interpreting the poem,

Bloom quotes almost al l the important scholars before him

who have tr ied to do so. Finally he brings everything

round to Buber's 'I- tho^^' relationship, thus making his

approach dif ferent from that of al l h is predecessors.

I n the detai led analysis of Prometheus Unbound,

Bloom draws al l kinds of paral lels and analogues from

other writers and considers various possibi l i t ies of mutual

inf luences and aff init ies. He does not forget to make a

tongue-in-the-cheek remark about readers who are

interested in reading cri t ical material on the poems

without reading the poems themselves: "[. . . ] our peculiar

l i terary vice is to have forgotten how to read a long poem,

though we are a l l of us adept at reading and judging

essays and even books devoted to the examination of

long poems we ourselves in fact have not read, or are not

able to read" (1 10).

Bloom describes "The Sensit ive Plant" as "a

prelude to a greater visionary poem by Shelley, 'The

Witch of Atlas"'(148). l i e cannot discuss a poem in

isolat ion, but has to relate i t to other poems by the same

author or to poems by other poets. This method reminds

us of T.S.Eliot 's view of tradit ion in his legendary essay

"Tradit ion and the Individual Talent." Spenser is the

ancestor of Shelley as far as "The Sensit ive Plant" is

concerned. Hence Spenser's poem "Muiopotmos" is

discussed f irst. Blake's "The Book of Thel" is also

discussed as a potential precursor of Shelley's poem.

Bloom registers his protest against T.S.Eliot who

had dismissed "The Witch of Atlas" as a " t r i f le." In his

opinion, "The Witch of Atlas" rates as one of Shelley's

best long poems and the supreme example of myth-

making poetry in English. I t is the culmination of the

Spenserian tradit ion and itself in turn is the ancestor of

many f ine poems of Yeats.

Bloom admits that biographical facts and sources

are necessary for a complete approach to poems l ike

"Epipsychidion." His approach to such poems is

incomplete because he has focused only on the

mythopoeic aspect of the poems. Dante is the chief

inf luence on "Epipsychidion," but he is more useful as a

contrast. I n this poem the confrontation of a ' thou' in one

human being by the ' I ' in another is set for th as the

theme.

Bloom is of the view that the fragment "Triumph of

Life" has been misread by a l l the commentators who have

writ ten on i t . But they made valuable contr ibutions

regarding the sources of the poem and interpretation of

di f f icul t passages. The influences of Dante and Spenser

are important in the reading of the poem. Various

passages are examined by Bloom against the background

of explanations given by scholars before him.

Bloom who is a romantic cri t ic to the core, published

his second book The Visionary Company in 1961. I t is a

study of the six major English Romantic poets. The

introductory chapter 'Prometheus Rising ..." discusses the

social, pol i t ical and economic background of English

Romantic poetry. Bloom observes that one of the major

English contr ibutions to world l i terature was the start l ing

phenomenon of six major poets appearing in just two

generations. The Romantic age saw the end of the old

pastoral England and the beginning of a new industr ial

nation. Power passed from the aristocracy and upper

middle class to a new class including industr ia l

employers. In addit ion to the peasantry and city artisans,

the common people of England now included the huge

class of tormented industr ial workers. This emerging

class was greatly influenced by the American Revolution

and the French Revolution in the last quarter o f the

eighteenth century.

England, which was already shaken by continental

wars and economic anarchy, was beginning to experience

social unrest. The ruling class responded to this by

imposing an effective repression. There was considerable

protest against this but England lacked the means and

leadership to effectively organize this protest . The great

writers of the period reacted to this stagnant situation by

an internal movement, that created a new kind of poetry,

which we now cal l romantic poetry.

The term "Romantic" was used by later Victorian

l i terary historians to describe the l i terary period that was

contemporary with the French Revolution and the

Napoleonic wars. But now the word is used to mean not

only that period, says Bloom, but to refer to "a kind of art

that is t imeless and recurrent as well , usually viewed as

being in some kind of opposition to an art cal led classical

or neo-classical" (xvi). The six major poets of the period

shared the spir i t of the age - the optimist ic bel ief that "a

renovated universe was possible - that l i fe could never

again be what i t had been" (xvi).

Bloom observes that the religious background of the

Romantic poets was in the tradit ion of Protestant dissent,

"the kind of non-conformist vision that descended from

the le f t wing of Englanci's Pur i tan movement" (xvi i) . I t was

a displaced Protestantism astonishingly t ransformed by

di f ferent k inds o f humanism or natural ism. This rel igious

t rend adequately explains the attack on Romant ic poetry

by T.S.El iot and his fol lowers. The New Cri t ics too

deprecated the Romantic poets because they broke away

from Christ iani ty and attempted to formulate personal

re l ig ions in their poetry. Bloom traces the beginning of

th is Protestant grouping back to Spenser and Mil ton from

where i t passes through the major Romant ic and Victorian

poets, reaching up to Hardy and Lawrence in the

twent ieth century. The poets brought in to favour by El iot

and the New Cri t ics - Donne, Herbert, Dryden, Pope,

Hopkins and El iot himself - were Cathol ics or High

Church Angl icans. Bloom maintains that there are two

main t radi t ions of Engl ish Poetry and "what dist inguishes

them are not only aesthetic considerat ions but conscious

di f ferences in rel igion and pol i t ics" (xvi i) . One is the

Protestant, Radical , Mil tonic-Romantic l ine, which

according to Bloom is the central l ine. The other is

Cathol ic, conservative and Classical .

The Restorat ion and Augustan poets t reated man

"as a dist inct ly l imi ted being, set in a context of reason,

nature and society that ordered his horizons and denied

any possibi l i ty of a radical alteration in h is mundane

hopes" (xxi). Hence they were haunted by the fear of

psychic energy and the conviction that death in l i fe

awaited any poet who indulged his imagination. Romantic

poetry on the other hand is distinguished by apocalyptic

longings to be achieved through and in imagination.

According to Bloom, the centre of Romantic poetic theory

is "the astonishingly fecund and bewilderingly varied

concept of imagination" (xxii).

Romantic self-exaltation has been viewed as mere

megalomania by many modern cri t ics l ike I rv ing Babbitt,

T.E.Hulme, T.S.Eliot and the academic New Crit ics. But

for Bloom, i t i s a metaphysic, "a vision, a way of seeing

and of l iving a more human l i fe" (xxi i i - xxiv). The hope of

the Romantic poets was that poetry, "by expressing the

whole man, could either l iberate him from his fal len

condit ion or, more compellingly, make him see that

condit ion as unnecessary, as an unimaginative f ict ion that

an awakened spir i t could slough off" (xxiv). Based on this

vision, Bloom proceeds to perform a reading of the six

great poets who, though so dif ferent in their reactions to

the theme of imaginatjon, had in common, a quali ty of

passion and largeness in speech and in response to l ife.

Al l of them knew that the theory of poetry is the theory of

l i fe.

After the il luminating introduction, Bloom examines

the poetry of the six major Romantic poets in six

chapters. A l l the important poems are subjected to

detai led analysis. A brief chapter 7 is devoted to the

poetry of Beddoes, Clare, Darley and others.

In a brief epilogue Bloom observes that no mode of

cri t icism has dehumanized poetry more than

structuralism. But Romantic poetry, which has survived

several varieties of reduction, wil l survive the

structural ists against whom it offers a f ierce counter

crit ique. English poets were and are romantic, as poets

used to be Christians whether they wanted to be or not.

We today cannot read Romantic poetry as i t was meant to

be read. Too many shadows have fal len between the

Romantics and ourselves. The freedom to know appears

to have been lost. The sorrows of poetic inf luence blight

readers and cri t ics even as they aff l ict poets. Our

readings are swerving into language.

Yeats, published in 1970, i s a book-length study of

the twentieth century Romantic poet who comes at this

end of the l ine of visionary poets. Bloom describes this

book as "a prolegomenon to a larger study of poetic

inf luence, in addition to being a cri t ical reading of Yeats

[. . . I " (vi i) . Yeats's ancestors in the l ine of vision are

Blake and Shelley and his achievements are judged

against theirs. According to Bloom, Yeats, Hardy and

Wallace Stevens are tne twentieth century English poets

who merit comparison with the major poets of the

nineteenth century. His dislike for poets l ike T.S.Eliot and

Auden is quite evident when he predicts that they may

prove to be the Cowley and Cleveland of this age.

The introductory chapter of Yeats gives a clear

indication of the theory of poetic inf luence in the making.

Though his theory differs considerably from that of

Borges, Bloom admits that he has accepted Borges's idea

of the poet 's creation of a precursor as his start ing point.

He brief ly explains his idea of poetic inf luence and

introduces some of the terms used in his later books on

theory.

Bloom is so much preoccupied with his own theory

of poet ic inf luence that he cannot treat any poet in

isolat ion. In the book on Yeats also he begins by

comparing various approaches to Yeats's poetry and the

inf luence of precursors l ike Pater, Blake and Shelley. In

the preface he admits that a ful l discussion of Yeats's

work does not commence unti l part way through chapter

6. In the remaining 19 chapters, a thorough study of

Yeats's poems and the various inf luences on them is

carried out in a str ict chronological order.

Yet another study of Romantic poetry, The Ringers

in the Tower, came out in 1971. I t is a col lect ion of

essays, which had already appeared in other places. In

the Preface Bloom states that the major subject o f the

essays is poet ic influence conceived as an anxiety

principle or a variety of melancholy, part icularly in regard

to the relat ions between poets in the Romantic tradit ion.

He also suggests that i f the poets are to survive the

anxiet ies of inf luence, they must learn to master and unify

themes l ike the Promethean quest and i ts fai lure, the

estrangement of landscape from the imaginative quester

and so on. Out of the total o f twenty-one essays, only

three are devoted to prose works and that too because

these prose works - Frankenstein, Ruskin's cri t icism and

Marius the Epicurean - are closely connected to prevalent

themes in poetry.

According to Bloom, The Odyssey is the

fundamental quest romance and the f irst romantic poem.

Romance is a journey toward home or toward a supreme

tr ia l after which home is possible. We are given a quester

and his quest, antagonists and temptations, a presiding

goal. Even when the goal is delusive, the journey is more

valuable than the destination so that there is no sense of

loss. Romanticism fused romance and prophecy.

In Bloom's opinion, Romantic poetry has been saved

from the worst dif f icult ies "by i ts sense of i ts own

tradit ion, by the l iberating burden of poetic inf luence"

(10). Though Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton together

formed a colossal covering cherub and prevented the

romantics from certain achievements, they at the same

time compelled them to invent continuously. Invention is

the posit ive mode of divination, which is the essence of

poetic power.

I n the chapter on "The Visionary Cinema of

Romantic Poetry," Bloom discusses the abundance of

visual detai l in Romantic poetry, especial ly in the poems

of Blake, Shelley and Wordsworth. A l l o f them tend to

make the visible a l i t t le hard to see. After reading the

beaut i fu l passage from Shelley's "Epipsychidion" in which

Shelley describes Emilna Viviani, we fee l dissatisf ied with

"the ways we ordinarily describe a woman's beauty - and

even more, with the grossness of the motion picture

camera or i ts manipulator [ . . .I" (51) .

A whole chapter is devoted to the discussion of the

dialectic o f the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell." According

to Bloom, i t is fu l l o f irony and i t is very di f f icul t to mark

the l imits of this irony. In another chapter Bloom

discusses in detai l Blake's Jerusalem, which according to

him has taken Ezekiel's Book as the model for i ts

structure. Blake's central image of the Merkabah or the

Divine Chariot and the lmages of the Four Zoas are taken

from Ezekiel. Bloom remarks that Ezekiel is to Jerusalem

as Homer is to Aeneid. In the brief sixth chapter, Bloom

examines the romantic treatment of Napoleon and comes

to the conclusion that i t was Shelley who wrote the proper

Romantic dirge for the great hero.

In the chapter which Bloom cal ls an "Introduction to

Shelley," he admits that after many years of reading

Shelley's poems, he finds nothing in them that needs

apology. "Shelley is a unique poet, one of the most

or ig inal in the language, and he is in many ways the poet

proper, as much so as any in the language" (87). Those

who try to bel i t t le the great poet are "churchwardenly

crit ics." Before concluding the essay, Bloom identi f ies six

major variet ies of anti-Shelleyans, namely: 1. The school

of common sense, 2 . The Christian orthodox school, 3.

The school o f wit, 4. The Moralists, 5. The school of

classic form and 6. The precisionists or concretists.

The book also contains a brief discussion of Mary

Shelley's novel Frankenstein. Bloom feels that the

importance of the novel i s that i t contains one of the most

vivid versions we have of the romantic mythology of the

self. According to him the major inf luences that haunt the

novel are the novels of Will iam Godwin and "The Ancient

Mariner" o f Coleridge.

The essay on "Keats and the Embarrassments of

Poetic Tradit ion" begins with the quotation from W.J.Bate

on the paralyzing embarrassment that a r ich tradit ion can

impose on an aspiring young poet. Indirectly hint ing at

the impending theory oi the anxiety of inf luence, he

remarks: "Somewhere in the heart of each new poet there

is hidden the dark wish that the l ibraries be burned in

some new Alexandrian conflagration, that the imagination

might be l iberated from the greatness and oppressive

power of i ts own dead champions" (131). Keats had the

gi f t of absolute originality, which according to Bloom, was

given by a clarity in his knowledge of the uniqueness and

f inal i ty of human l i fe and death.

In "Tennyson and the Romantic Tradit ion," Bloom

declares that Tennyson was the legit imate heir of Keats.

He is the most extreme instance of imagination going one

way and the wi l l going quite another. His poetry is many-

sided. A considerable portion of the essay is ut i l ized for

discussing Tennyson's poetry in relat ion to the romantic

poets.

I t seems that Bloom is especially fascinated by

Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" of

which he has written or1 different occasions. Chapter 11

of Ringers in the Tower is a detailed discussion of this

poem. He claims that the truest precursor of Childe

Roland is Shelley. Bloom points out that the dominant

mood of Childe Roland is the anxiety of influence, "in that

variety of poetic melancholy that issues from the terrible

strength of post-Enlightenment l iterary tradit ion" (166).

The excellence of the poem is the clinamen or the swerve

i t makes away from i ts precursors, f rom Shelley in

part icular.

There is a somewhat lengthy analysis of Ruskin's

l i terary cri t icism in this work. Bloom points out that

Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode" had exerted a haunting

inf luence on Ruskin. We get a good biography of the

great cr i t ic and after that an evaluative analysis of his

l i terary cri t icism. Ruskin's achievement can be classif ied

into three major areas: art, social cr i t icism and literary

cri t icism. The inf luences behind his work are Wordsworth

and Shelley. His ideas and att i tudes are examined from

various angles.

Bloom says that Walter Pater's place in the

Romantic t radi t ion was a consciously chosen one. Pater

is also one of the central f igures in the continuity

between Romanticism, Modernism and the emergent

sensibi l i ty replacing modernism at the t ime. Bloom

observes that l ike Eliot, Pater too was a cri t ic, a creator

and a moral ist at the same time. The essay provides a

detai led interpretation of Marius the Epicurean.

In the chapter on Lawrence, El iot, Blackmur and the

Tortoise, Bloom finds fault with Blackmur for placing

Lawrence much below Pound and El iot and for defending

Eliot as a dogmatic cri t ic and poet. I n h is opinion,

Lawrence is the romantic heir o f Coleridge and Blake.

The chapter "Poetic Misprision: Three Cases" gives

us Bloom's definit ion 0.f poetic inf luence and revisionism.

Stating that Auden is one of the modern sufferers from

the malady of poetic influence, he goes on to explain:

Poetic inf luence, in this sense, has l i t t le to do

with the transmission of ideas and images from

an earl ier poet to a later one. Rather, i t

concerns the poet's sense of h is precursors,

and of his own achievement i n relat ion to

theirs. Have they le f t him room enough, or has

their priori ty cost him his art? More crucially,

where did they go wrong, so as to make it

possible for him to go r ight? In this revisionary

sense, in which the poet creates his own

precursors by necessarily misinterpreting

them, poetic Influence forms and malforms new

poets, and aids their art at the cost of

increasing f inal ly, their already acute sense of

isolat ion. (209)

'The Central Man: Emerson, Whitman and Wallace

Stevens" is an essay which tr ies to drive home Bloom's

belief that, as Emersorr had claimed, the poet is the true

man at the centre of men. Whitman later found the true

centre appearing in himself. Wallace Stevens who is heir

to both Emerson and Whitman, is "the ironical ly yet

passionately balanced fulf i l lment of the American

Romantic tradit ion in poetry" (218). There is a powerful

and direct inf luence of Emerson upon Whitman and a

subtler, less direct effect of Whitman on Stevens. But

poetic inf luence is as yet "a process about which a l l too

l i t t le is presently known anyway" (219).

In "A Commentary on Notes toward a Supreme

Fict ion" Bloom asserts that Stevens had the radiant

fortune to have his most ambitious poem as his best. He

takes the poem section by section and analyses the whole

poem qui te minutely. Chapter 18 is a comprehensive

interpretation of the poems of A.R.Ammons.

Chapter 19, "The Dialectic o f Romantic Poetry in

America" i s an examination of four "f irst volumes" of

American poetry. Bloonl remarks at the outset o f the

essay that i t is meant "as prolegomenon to a projected

larger study of American Romantic poetry, to be

conducted on the princrples of a revisionary theory of

poetic inf luence, and i ts consequences for practical

crit icism" (291). The poets discussed are Emerson,

E.A.Robinson, Hart Crane and Alvin Feinman who cover

the per iod from 1846 to 1964. Chapter 20 examines the

view that Romanticism is opposed to the rat ional. Bloom

feels that the great Romantic poets have nothing against

reason.

The book concludes with an epi logue in which Bloom

raises the question whether i t i s a new romanticism or

another decadence. At the end of the book, B.loorn fai ls to

give a def in i te answer to this question.

The new age of romantic myth in l i terary cri t icism

had already been inaugurated by Northrop Frye. The

theory of the visionary imagination of romanticism

presented by Bloom in his early books belongs ful ly to

th is new trend. Bloom has frequently acknowledged this

indebtedness to Frye.

One important deviat ion from conventional romantic

cri t icism that can be noted in Bloom is h is observation

that the Romantics were not poets of nature. He is also

dif ferent from modernist cr i t ics in his assessment of the

Romantics. According to the modernist cr i t ics, Yeats

began as a romantic, but triumphed over romanticism in

his later career. Bloom countered this assumption by

pointing out that Yeats failed as a poet when he

abandoned the visionary power of imagination.

Bloom places Shelley in a posit ion of preeminence

while devaluing in varying degrees the establ ished

Romantics of tradit ional crit icism l ike Wordsworth,

Coleridge, Byron and Keats. He has practical ly nothing to

say of Byron. Even Coleridge, who was held in some

esteem by the New Critics, was almost ignored by him.

David Fite points out that there is "ample evidence

throughout his writ ings to suggest that Shelley, not Blake

or Stevens or Emerson remains the poet closest to his

own heart 's desires" (Fite 27).

From the very beginning, Bloom's reading of

romantic and modern poetry challenges the main

assumptions of the modernist approach to l i terary texts.

His early books are an extended polemic against the

tradit ion immediately preceding him that had sl ighted al l

the romantics except Coleridge and that had quite

contemptuously dismissed Shelley. His l i terary career has

been an incessant struggle with New Humanism, New

Crit icism and the "neo-Christian matrix of modern Anglo-

Cathol ic letters" represented by Eliot, Auden and Lewis

(Bloom, Ringers 207). Romantic imagination, according to

Bloom, is an inf inite and inexpressible desire in the

process of trying to utter itself. His attempt is to subsume

Modernism by his special version of visionary

Romanticism and thereby to deliver a resounding blow

against cri t ical tradit ion. He based his reading method on

a powerful but narrow definit ion of Romanticism as a

primari ly visionary mode. As Fite points out, he "ful ly

engages the imaginative l i fe of the works he admires, and

thus replaces New Crit ical 'objectivi ty ' with his own

dist inct ly passionate advocacy of, and prophecy about,

the Romantic cause" (Fite 31).